HUBRIS IN SEARCH OF NEMESIS, ACCOMPANIED BY ANGST, BUT WITHOUT CATHARSIS*
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

*Go get a dictionary now. It’ll save a lot of e-mails.

You know what, I almost couldn’t be arsed writing this. I’ve just come back from somewhere so hot it makes YOUR holiday look like a caravan stay in Bracknell. In the heat, perforce, you amble because you have to. Or you drive an air-conditioned car. How does 48-50 degrees centigrade grab you? As a matter of fact, by the brain. Then it fries it to the size of a peanut, the dimensions of the average pinky brain, if you don’t take shelter pretty damn pronto. If you’re fat or short you end up deservedly as a puddle on the pavement. I tell you this merely to irritate you if you have suffered through apparently disparate English weather recently.

On my return I find the Melledrew Tendency (friends, I give way to your shoals of begging e-mails, the term is hereby reintroduced) has once again reappeared from under stones, up through drain grids and out of dry rot fruiting bodies, places of temporary residence during the season we finished seventh. To wit, the Paul Gregg induced ownership row. You can always rely on the Tendency to come out frothing through their dentures, telling you who they hate and how they and they alone can save the world. But only if you buy it, or one of their shares in it. You can bet your bottom Euro Gregg COUNTED on them and used them as easily as glove puppets. Tsk tsk.

For want of a better term I will dub this “The New Immorality.”

Now, the situation is quite straightforward. Paul and his family part-owners wanted to start a public row and spook Bill Kenwright but failed, at least initially. Meantime he proposed everybody else sack themselves because he says so. He provides no proof of anything, never mind finance. Basically, Bill Kenwright is supposed to almost bankrupt himself because Paul says so. Naturally, Evertonian Bill is disinclined to do so. Rightly, no sensible fan trusts Paul one millimetre despite a public relations campaign run by a firm of shysters based in Mathew Street, a campaign so amateurish it might qualify for a script in a Loony Tunes cartoon. Even the banks have, well, fucked him off, actually. Paul says he’s been unhappy for eighteen months, which, funny enough, coincides roughly with the date the other directors quite rightly trampled all over his “reverse mortgage” proposal for Kings Dock. Paul fails (as he has from the start) to explain why he bought into the club in the first place. If he goes to law likely he will have to go public on the machinations of True Blue Holdings and that will probably adversely affect the value of his investment therein. Which machinations would also probably finally alienate him from the fans.

Meantime, John Grantchester remains nothing more than a sulky Janus-faced dilletante more concerned with his resentment of personalities than the well being of the club he could buy ten times over if he really wished. He is more of an Alice-type white rabbit than a white knight. And he’ll remain that way until he summons the courage to do something constructive.

Bill might still get pissed off enough to leave. If he did, nobody sensible would blame him. Who in their right fucking senses would want to put himself and his family through the shite thrown by Paul and the thick, sordid twats in the Melledrew Tendency and their weird resentments? After all memories are still fresh of the lunatic Manchester City fan who actually got to the bedside of the sick, aged mother of besieged Manchester City owner and fan Peter Swales, before being dragged off to Bedlam and locked securely in a padded cell.

Unfortunately there are also some fans who have either fallen hook, line and sinker for The New Immorality or have never experienced an alternative. In the latter case there can be a measure of understanding of their position. But in both cases when things go wrong there can be a tendency to mob mentality or a search for simple solutions. Money, they parrot, led by false messiahs, is the answer. When it gets cloaked in New Immorality jargon – “investment,” “revenue streams,” “marketing,” “rights issue,” “shares sales,” “free markets,” “sponsorship” and “corporate entertainment” being just a few of the tedious code words – then you can guarantee you are faced with a suited-up commissioned officer from Spaceship Greed with the imagination and talent of a lemming or an Enron director in handcuffs. Such mentalities know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Inevitably the spaceship crashes. It happens so regularly you would have thought the species would have learned the lesson by now. Alas, no. Hence Paul Gregg’s absurd PR campaign.

In this issue, no sweat, I’m on Bill Kenwright’s side, an Evertonian right through, even if eventually he decides to resign and just become a fan again. I have had and continue to have my differences with him. Given the circumstances it would be surprising were it otherwise. That’s life. But he has said almost from the start that he would stand aside if someone wanted to buy in and had a viable financial proposal. Nobody has ever made one and that includes Paul Gregg. Hot air and public relations campaigns do not constitute a financial proposal any more than a barrow-boy type rights issue would solve our economic problems.

Friends, these are the times we live in, footy and otherwise. The loonies are on the asylum roof trying to recover their ball. It’s only a matter of time before they tumble off and drop on their heads. Which can’t come soon enough.

Mind you, that Trevor Birch, he must be a bit slippery. That whooosh! noise was Trev coming in, skidding on his heel across the room and going out the opposite door without pause. Can’t see how he got the job in the first place even though a blind man on a bike could – and did – forecast the change almost two years ago, and even though it was at Paul Gregg’s behest. Nice one, Paul. Another example of your “business expertise”? Surely Trev knew the formula for success? For those who missed it first time round, here it is:

Sell Your Best Players + Keep Your Best Players On Top Whack Dosh + Keep Wayne Rooney + Sell Wayne Rooney + Buy New Players + Don’t Buy New Players + Improve Our PR With The Media + Ignore The Media They’re All Shitheads + Sack The Board With No Money + From Somewhere Get A New Board With No Money Either + Reduce Overheads Immediately By 50% + Don’t Get Relegated + Get Relegated Because It’ll Do Us Good In The End + Sell More Merchandise + Increase Gate Prices + Don’t Increase Gate Prices + Speculate To Accumulate + Don’t Spend Money We Haven’t Got + Hand The Club Over To “Businessmen” Who’ll Sort Everything Out + Hand The Club Over To The County Road Ale House Cooperative Movement + Build/Share A New Stadium + Stay Where We Are Till Goodison Rots Or Gets Rebuilt With An Even Lower Capacity + Hand The Club Over To Local Spivs And Criminals + Moan Forever And Ever = Complete Satisfaction, Resolution And Lots Of Footy Trophies.

The fact is, the relationship between Bill Kenwright and Paul Gregg was only ever as strong as its weakest point, as are all human relations. And that was a fusion of Paul Gregg’s disinterest in football and Bill Kenwright’s lack of funds. The former has now attempted to overwhelm the latter. Thus the balance – always tenuous at best, but quite workable as long as it stayed mutually constructive – irrevocably has been destroyed. I suspect it has been crumbling for a long time, maybe as long as two years. Everyone is now in limbo including fans, players and staff. The club is moribund and present public circumstances are firmly the fault of Paul Gregg, nobody else. To his great credit Bill Kenwright has tried to keep the situation dignified. Paul Gregg hasn’t. Moreover it is as plain as a pikestaff that Paul wants out but hasn’t the courage to say so, or the willingness to take an equal hit on the value of his investment. If he had any common sense he would propose sale of the club with proportionate affect on his and everyone else’s holdings. The problem is of course – nobody wants to buy. That is where the raw application of extreme right wing economics has brought the game and our club.

I have no idea how it will work out. Nobody has. Don’t believe anyone who tells you they have the solution. Make up your own mind. Beware of one dimensional idiots in the Melledrew Tendency. See public relations campaigns for what they are. Keep your fingers crossed. Because without sensible widespread organization that’s all you CAN do.

Above all, don’t deceive yourself about the coming season. It’s going to be hard. Very. And if we get a lot of injuries, probably disastrous. (10/08/04)

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